搭载 eVTOL，最快2026年内在阿联酋迪拜落地。可搭载1名飞行员+4名乘客，最高时速322公里，单次充电航程161公里，全程零排放；1640英尺外噪音45分贝，碳纤维机身，电传飞控，4组锂电池，6具可转向五叶螺旋桨。用户可通过优步 APP 一键预订 Uber Air 服务，平台将自动规划全行程，从迪拜朱美拉棕榈岛前往附近的Joby垂直起降场，随后搭乘空中出租车飞往Joby航空迪拜国际机场（OMDB）的垂直起降场。

How Uber Plans to Launch Electric Air Taxi Flights in 2026

Platform users in Dubai could hail rides on Joby Aviation’s electric air taxi as soon as this year.

Uber as soon as this year will add a quiet, all-electric, aerial complement to its ground-based ride-hailing platform.

Uber and Joby Aviation on Thursday unveiled “Uber Air”—a new, on-demand service using Joby’s four-passenger, electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi. Joby said it expects to carry its first passengers later this year in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where the partners shared a first look at Uber Air during a product and flight demonstration.

“With Uber Air, riders will be able to book Joby’s electric air taxi through a simple and familiar, one-tap experience on Uber, seamlessly connecting every leg of their journey—making ground-to-sky travel even more effortless,” said Sachin Kansal, chief product officer for Uber, in a statement.

At the heart of Uber Air will be Joby’s eVTOL air taxi. The all-electric model is designed for a pilot to fly up to four passengers and four carry-on bags, with a top speed of about 200 mph and zero in-flight emissions. Per Joby, it can fly up to 100 miles on a single charge while producing 45 dBA of noise—equivalent to the humming of a refrigerator—during cruise from 1,640 feet away.

Propulsion comes from four lithium-ion battery packs. These power six five-bladed propellers, which provide vertical lift during takeoff and hover but swivel forward to support cruise flight.

The air taxi has a carbon fiber composite frame and is controlled using a fly-by-wire system.

Per Joby and Uber, riders will be able to enter their destination on the Uber app. They will see an Uber Air option if the service is available. A single tap prompts the platform to plan the entire journey, including ground connections via Uber Black vehicles.

The partners shared a sample trip that depicts an Uber Black ride from Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah to a nearby Joby vertiport. From there, an air taxi would fly the passenger to Joby’s Dubai International Airport (OMDB) vertiport, where another car would be waiting to take them to one of the airport’s terminals.

Joby plans to build four vertiports in Dubai, with one in construction at Dubai Airport.

Uber Tries Again

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because Uber has tried it before.

The company in 2016 created Uber Elevate, which it billed as an aerial ridesharing platform that would one day ferry passengers in cities such as Los Angeles or Dallas.

Elevate never came to fruition. Instead, Joby acquired it in late 2020. Uber also increased its investment in the electric aircraft developer from $50 to $125 million.

Veterans of Uber Elevate are the architects of Joby’s ElevateOS platform, which Joby believes has solved the issues that held back the defunct ride-hailing platform. If the Dubai passenger service moves forward in a few months as planned, the company could have its answer.

“2026 will mark a key inflection point for Joby,” said JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby, in a Wednesday earnings announcement. “After a year full of rigorous full-transition flight testing and meaningful progress across every part of our business, we’ve begun to shift our focus from how and when we’ll go to market, to how many aircraft we can produce and where to deploy them.”

Those operations would almost certainly happen before the FAA certifies Joby’s air taxi. The firm is building production-ready aircraft as it works toward for-credit type inspection authorization (TIA) tests, during which FAA pilots will evaluate their airworthiness.

Joby in a Wednesday earnings announcement said all aircraft required for its TIA are now in production, with the first “set to fly shortly.” But it added that FAA pilots won’t get in the cockpit until later this year, at the earliest.

Didier Papadopoulos, Joby’s president of aircraft OEM, in November said the company is pursuing a “qualification program” with the UAE’s aviation regulator, under which it may be “possible, depending on where things go” for the air taxi to fly passengers before being certified.

Eric Allison, Joby’s chief product officer, likened the arrangement to an FAA experimental market survey certificate that permits noncommercial passenger flights with precertified aircraft. Competitor Beta Technologies has conducted several passenger-carrying flights in the U.S. with its market survey permissions.

Allison, the former head of Uber Elevate, is among those who transitioned to Joby following the 2020 acquisition. He has been instrumental in creating ElevateOS, which like the Uber app is designed to match pilots with riders.

“We expect travelers to book on-demand and to be boarding an aircraft just minutes later, much like the experience of using ground-based ridesharing today,” Allison said in 2024. “That required us to totally rethink the software and the operations of these aircraft.”

On the pilot side, the system monitors fatigue, provides information about the aircraft, and enables preflight and postflight checks. An “intelligent matching engine” pairs the pilots with riders, who hail flights on a mobile app. A core operations system manages landing pad access, maintenance scheduling, and more.

Joby is already putting ElevateOS to the test. For about two years, it has shuttled employees on-demand using a Cirrus SR22, which like the company’s air taxi is designed for a pilot plus up to four passengers. Employees select a time, origin, and destination and are autonomously matched with other riders. The platform also enables payments, which Joby has tested with a handful of external users.

The company says it is permitted to deploy ElevateOS in commercial operations under its Part 135 authorization. It plans to use its Blade passenger service—acquired from Blade Air Mobility for $125 million in August—as a real-world test arena for the platform.

“We set out to build a new layer of urban transportation,” Allison said Wednesday. “Our focus has always been on creating a flight experience that operates quietly and integrates naturally into the rhythm of city life.”

Joby in September said Blade’s charter service could be integrated on the Uber platform as soon as this year. Users would be able to book flights out of Blade’s network of landing points and passenger lounges, four of which are in the New York City area. Joby intends to move Blade services into the Uber app and transition them to the air taxi once it is certified.

Blade has additional facilities and operations in Europe, particularly in the French Riviera. Elsewhere, it offers chartered flights on third-party rotorcraft, jets, and seaplanes.

DeepSeek翻译（仅供参考）:

Uber与Joby航空（Joby Aviation）于 2026 年 2 月 25 日正式发布按需空中出行服务

迪拜的平台用户最快今年就能乘坐Joby航空的电动空中出租车出行。优步即将为其地面打车平台增添一个安静、全电动的空中补充服务。

优步与Joby航空于周四发布了"优步空中的士"——一项使用Joby四座电动垂直起降飞行器的新型按需服务。Joby表示，预计将于今年晚些时候在阿联酋迪拜搭载首批乘客，合作伙伴在迪拜的一次产品和飞行演示中首次展示了优步空中的士。

优步首席产品官萨钦·坎萨尔在一份声明中表示："通过优步空中的士，乘客将能够通过优步应用上简单熟悉的一键操作体验预订Joby的电动空中出租车，无缝连接旅程的每一段——让地面到天空的出行更加便捷。"

优步空中的士的核心将是Joby的电动垂直起降飞行器。这款全电动型号设计由飞行员驾驶，可搭载最多四名乘客和四件随身行李，最高时速约200英里，且飞行中零排放。据Joby称，它单次充电可飞行最多100英里，在1640英尺外的巡航状态下产生的噪音为45分贝——相当于冰箱的嗡嗡声。

动力来自四个锂离子电池组。这些电池组驱动六个五叶螺旋桨，在起飞和悬停时提供垂直升力，但可向前旋转以支持巡航飞行。

该空中出租车采用碳纤维复合材料机身，并通过电传操纵系统进行控制。

据Joby和优步介绍，乘客可以在优步应用上输入目的地。如果该服务可用，他们将看到优步空中的士选项。一键点击即可让平台规划整个行程，包括通过优步黑色车型提供的地面接驳服务。

合作伙伴展示了一个示例行程：乘客先乘坐Uber Black车辆从迪拜朱美拉棕榈岛前往附近的Joby垂直起降场，随后搭乘电动空中出租车飞往Joby迪拜国际机场垂直起降场，最后换乘另一辆等候的车辆抵达机场航站楼。

Joby计划在迪拜建造四个垂直起降场，其中一个已在迪拜机场开工建设。

优步的再次尝试

如果这一切听起来似曾相识，那是因为优步此前已有过尝试。

该公司于2016年创建了Uber Elevate，将其宣传为一个未来将在洛杉矶或达拉斯等城市运送乘客的空中拼车平台。

然而Elevate项目未能实现。相反，Joby在2020年底收购了它。优步也将其对这家电动飞行器开发商的投资从5000万美元增加到1.25亿美元。

Uber Elevate的原班人马正是Joby ElevateOS平台的架构师。Joby认为该平台已解决了导致原拼车平台夭折的问题。如果迪拜的客运服务能在几个月内按计划推进，公司或将迎来答案。

Joby创始人兼首席执行官乔本·贝维特在周三的财报公告中表示：“2026年将是Joby的关键转折点。在经历了一整年严格的全程过渡飞行测试以及业务各方面取得实质性进展后，我们已开始将关注点从‘如何以及何时进入市场’转向‘我们能生产多少架飞机以及将它们部署在哪里’。”

认证进程与监管合作

这些运营几乎肯定会先于美国联邦航空管理局对Joby空中出租车的认证。该公司正在制造可投产的飞机，同时推进用于获取正式型号检查核准（TIA）的测试，届时FAA飞行员将评估其适航性。

Joby在周三的财报公告中表示，TIA所需的所有飞机均已投入生产，首架“即将试飞”。但补充说，FAA飞行员最早要到今年晚些时候才会进入驾驶舱。

Joby飞机 OEM总裁迪迪埃·帕帕佐普洛斯在11月表示，公司正与阿联酋航空监管机构推进一项“资质认证计划”，根据该计划，空中出租车“有可能在获得认证前就搭载乘客，具体取决于事态发展”。

Joby首席产品官埃里克·艾利森将这种安排比作FAA的实验性市场调查许可证，该许可证允许使用预认证飞机进行非商业性载客飞行。竞争对手Beta Technologies已凭借其市场调查许可在美国进行了多次载客飞行。

ElevateOS平台与实地测试

艾利森曾任Uber Elevate负责人，是2020年收购后转投Joby的人员之一。他在创建ElevateOS过程中发挥了关键作用，该平台与Uber应用类似，旨在实现飞行员与乘客的匹配。

艾利森在2024年表示：“我们期望乘客能够像今天使用地面拼车服务一样，在几分钟内完成按需预订并登机。这要求我们彻底重新思考这些飞机的软件和运营模式。”

在飞行员端，系统会监控疲劳状况、提供飞机信息，并支持起飞前和起飞后检查。一个“智能匹配引擎”将飞行员与通过移动应用叫飞的乘客进行配对。核心运营系统则负责管理起降坪使用、维护计划等。

Joby已在测试ElevateOS。约两年来，它一直使用西锐SR22飞机按需运送员工——该机型与公司的空中出租车一样，设计为一名飞行员加最多四名乘客。员工选择时间、起点和目的地后，系统会自动与其他乘客匹配。该平台还支持支付功能，Joby已与少量外部用户进行了测试。

公司表示，根据其第135部授权，它被允许在商业运营中部署ElevateOS。它计划利用去年8月以1.25亿美元从Blade Air Mobility收购的Blade乘客服务，作为该平台的实际测试场。

艾利森周三表示：“我们致力于构建城市交通的新层面。我们的关注点始终是创造一种安静运行、自然融入城市生活节奏的飞行体验。”

整合Blade服务，拓展运营网络

Joby在9月表示，Blade的包机服务最快今年就能整合到优步平台上。用户将能够预订Blade起降点和候机厅网络内的航班——其中四个位于纽约市地区。Joby计划将Blade服务迁移到优步应用中，并在空中出租车获得认证后将其过渡到该机型。

Blade在欧洲（尤其是法国里维埃拉）还拥有其他设施和运营点。在其他地区，它提供使用第三方旋翼机、喷气机和水上飞机的包机服务。

来源：FlyingMag